Railway model musings and developments

Monthly Archives: November 2012

At the start of this blog about Quarry Transfer, I mentioned that one of the purposes of the diorama was so I could take pictures. Well after having waited patiently for the grout to thoroughly dry, I have just placed a couple of different diesels on the diorama along with a little JCB and had a go at some test shots.

I am really, really pleased with the look of the photos, as the shots appear very different to the small diorama that currently resides on a book case in the front room.

The little JCB is a plastic Dapol kit of some vintage that my wife built and painted. She has done a very good job on the yellow highlighting. This will not be the construction vehicle that lives on the layout when it is finished. I hope to purchase a nice elaborate digger, maybe one from the Langley range.

I am also pleased with what appears to be tillage (well, I’m calling it tillage) at the base of the cliff, which was done by sprinkling bits of drying grout onto the still wet grout surface.

So what are the next steps? I think it would make sense to flatten out the colour of the rock face next, so likely an overall paint with black or grey. This can then be gradually highlighted up again.

These past two evenings we (me and Ruth) have added some landscaping to the front of Quarry Transfer. We started by cutting up some more blocks of polystyrene and sticking them to the lowest section of the diorama. We then attacked them with an assortment of tools. My aim was to continue the profile of the highest rock face (at the back of the diorama), so it looks as if the entire area where the railway is placed has been quarried out of the rock face.

I obviously had to make sure that the scenery at the front of the layout was quite low, so I can take photos, but I endeavoured to continue the profile of the rock strata. I also wanted to represent a small quarried area of rock where I can eventually place a little digger. I cut the face of the rock using my propane soldering iron with a cutting head attached. This gave a nice crescent shaped finish to the polystyrene.

More grout was then plastered over the polystyrene, which was easily manipulated into what looks like a muddy quarry track. I’m really pleased with the results so far.

I have not visited the Warley show at the NEC for a number of years. My last visit (some 3 or 4 years ago) was quite exhausting.

I am pleased to say that this years show was my most enjoyable visit to the exhibition, with some very impressive modelling on display.

‘Cliffhanger’ was a very impressive layout; constructed on a steeply angled base board. More on this superb layout can be found here.

Another great layout was ‘Veldhoveh 1935’. Positioned in a picture frame and viewed from a fixed perspective. This super small layout gives the impression of looking along a busy street in 1935 to a photo-realistic finish. It is all achieved with the clever use of different scale buildings and trains, not to mention the novel idea of creating a ‘skewed’ train that appears to be driving off into the distance.

If you can understand Dutch and fancy reading more about it, visit here.